A Cold Glass of Trouble
by traveller19
Summary: Londo and G'Kar have one last hurrah before Londo takes the throne as Centauri Emperor. Things do not go as planned, and a trip to Medlab is in order...if they can survive long enough to get there! Set in the "Hold Back the River" AU, toward the end of Season 5 (but you do not need to have read anything else in the series to enjoy this story). Happy birthday, jenniferstolzer!


"On a scale of one to ten, how much trouble do you think we are in?" Londo Mollari asked unhappily, scanning the tiny space surrounding him. It was barely large enough for the two of them to stand in.

"Well, that depends on how you define 'trouble'," replied G'Kar, trying to retain at least an apparent optimism for his friend's sake. "If I am correct, the word 'trouble', when used as a noun, as you have, can have any of several different meanings. There is 'an effort or exertion made to do something, especially when inconvenient', which I do not really think applies in this situation. Or perhaps you mean 'the malfunction of something such as a machine or a part of the body'. In that case, I would say we are in no trouble at all."

"And what about the definition where we both end up frozen to death and the restaurant workers find us as nothing more than icicles in the morning?" Londo hugged his arms to his chest and shivered. "They will just gently touch us and we will shatter into a million pieces." He poked the air demonstratively with his finger.

"Ah. You mean 'a cause of worry or inconvenience.'"

Londo gave a tired snort and rolled his eyes. "You certainly do have a way with words, G'Kar."

G'Kar offered a melodramatic bow, hoping his antics would settle his friend. But his effort seemed to be in vain. Londo walked restlessly over to the door, grasped the handle firmly with both hands, and threw all of his weight backward. Predictably, the door did not budge.

"What kind of designer makes an industrial freezer door that locks from the outside? One would think it would be a safety concern!" His raised voice yielded no effect other than to make G'Kar wince at the way it reverberated off of the solid metal walls.

"Perhaps one who did not anticipate that the soon-to-be Emperor of the Centauri Republic and a member of the Narn K'auri would choose their fine piece of craftsmanship in which to hide from security because they had illegal spirits smuggled onto a space station."

"Yes. Perhaps that." Londo shivered harder and slid down the wall until he was sitting down.

"Don't do that," G'Kar admonished. "You are increasing the percentage of your body in contact with the cold surface. You will only speed up the process of hypothermia. You must stand."

"I am _tired_ ," Londo shot back, narrowing his eyes. "Besides, I have the aforementioned illegal spirits to keep me warm." He waved a bottle of amber liquid up at G'Kar.

"That may be true, but I suspect you will have quite a bit of difficulty opening that bottle with your hands shaking the way they are." G'Kar purposefully tried to sound caring rather than pedantic. Londo looked furious for a moment, but then his anger fizzled and his shoulders slumped.

"I suppose you are right," he mumbled. He set the bottle down next to him and sighed deeply. "I do not think the guards who chased us knew who they were chasing – we were too far ahead of them."

G'Kar grinned. "Impressively far, I would say."

Londo managed a tired chuckle. "Perhaps. But G'Kar…no one knows we are here, do they?"

G'Kar paused. There it was. The truth, and there was no way around it. The lighthearted joking and trying to make the best of it was over. They were in, as Londo had said, trouble.

"No. No, I do not believe they do."

"I didn't think so." Londo pulled his tight-covered legs up to his chin and shivered harder. After several seconds, G'Kar lowered himself to the floor next to him.

"Lean into me."

"What?"

"Lean into me for warmth."

"G'Kar, surely our situation is not so dire as that."

"It will become dire more quickly if you do not do as I say!"

"Are you giving me orders now?"

"Mollari…"

The Centauri rolled his eyes melodramatically. " _Fine._ If it will make you happier and warmer, G'Kar, I will lean into you." He pressed his torso into G'Kar's chest and allowed the Narn to wrap his long arms around him. "There. Better now?"

G'Kar chuckled softly. Of course Londo needed to believe that G'Kar had requested sitting in this position to benefit himself rather than the Centauri. He would never openly acknowledge that of the two of them, he was in far graver danger in this situation. After the Centauri had decimated the ecosystems and the terrain of the Narn homeworld, severe climate change had set in. The red-sunned planet's surface temperature could vary by as much as sixty degrees Fahrenheit in a single day. As a result, Narn were generally fairly well adapted to extremes in temperature, although they of course had their limits.

Centauri, on the other hand, seemed to be exquisitely easy to damage. They had two hearts, which just increased the chances of one going bad; their physiology made them easy to poison (a fact which as a race they seemed to take advantage of on a regular basis); and the only redundancy in their entire bodies seemed to be in their reproductive organs, which just encouraged them to breed and produce more weak and vulnerable children. And they were _especially_ sensitive to the cold. Centauri Prime was the most consistently hot place G'Kar had ever been, and Londo kept his quarters at a ridiculously sweltering eighty-eight degrees Fahrenheit and _still_ wore at least five layers of clothing at all times. G'Kar wondered how Minbari, who seemed to like to keep their quarters in the low sixties, could even manage to visit their Centauri friends, should they have them. He would have to ask Vir Cotto or Mister Lennier - should he ever get out of this walk-in freezer, anyway. So much for one last hurrah, a chance for Londo to be just a little bit happy before his responsibilities as Emperor took over his existence.

They sat in silence, G'Kar contemplating their impending doom (especially Londo's), and imagining Londo was probably thinking the same thing. He had no concept of the passage of time – he bore no timepiece of his own, and Londo had left his pocket watch in his quarters. But after a while, Londo began to shiver harder and lean more and more of his weight into G'Kar. And then G'Kar began to shiver, as well. And _then_ he realized that Londo hadn't moved in quite some time.

"Mollari." He poked the Centauri in the back with one gloved finger. His heart pounded for exactly three rapid beats until Londo stirred.

"Mmm," he grunted, and then swallowed hard. "What?"

"Just making sure you were still among the living."

"Unfortunately for you, I am," Londo muttered. "If we ever get out of here, I will make you pay for dragging me in here."

"We would have gotten caught by security!"

"A night in a holding cell would have been preferable to freezing to death. Or at least in my book," the Centauri grumbled. He made a little "hmpf" noise that he tried to pass off as annoyance, but G'Kar knew that its actual purpose was to conceal the chattering of his teeth.

G'Kar attempted to get his friend's mind off of how cold he was. "How about instead of you making me pay, I buy you a drink to make up for it?" Never mind that alcohol was technically what had gotten them into this situation in the first place. And they had not even been intoxicated – what unfortunate luck.

"Need to…get out of this transport tube first," mumbled Londo.

G'Kar went rigid with alarm.

"Mollari." He tried to keep his voice light to avoid scaring his friend. "We are not in a transport tube. We are in a freezer. The transport tube incident was two years ago, and we were rescued. Remember?" Londo was no doubt recalling the time the two of them, their feud at its zenith of intensity, had been in a situation fairly similar to this one when an explosion had immobilized the transport tube they had happened to be sharing. G'Kar, delirious from the fumes, had wanted nothing more than for the incident to end in the Centauri Ambassador's demise, though his own might well have occurred right along with it. How times had changed - how different he had been back then. G'Kar's shiver was not only from the cold that time.

Londo blinked and looked as though he was thinking hard. "Oh." He shivered again, and G'Kar rubbed his hands vigorously up and down his friend's arms to try to convey at least a bit of warmth to him. His worry intensified when Londo did not protest, or even acknowledge what he was doing. But G'Kar continued the motion, the movement of his muscles warming him as he tried to pass the heat on to Londo. But despite his best efforts, his friend became steadily less responsive as time passed, until G'Kar prodded him emphatically and all Londo did was whimper softly.

"Mollari? Mollari, wake up!"

Londo stirred but did not answer him directly, and G'Kar's heart somersaulted within his chest. But before he had time to consider the situation further, a sudden warmth and light rushed into the little space, and the face of Security Chief Zack Allan, illuminated by a flashlight beam, came into view.

"There you two are. You know, I really hope the contraband you had smuggled in was worth all of this."

G'Kar could have kissed him.

"Please, Mister G'Kar, I understand you are worried about your friend, but it is important that you get warm as well." The nurse sounded frustrated as she pressed a hand to G'Kar's chest and lowered him back onto the Medlab bed for what must have been at least the fifth time.

"And as I told you before, I feel completely fine! You humans underestimate the sturdiness of the Narn race." The forced air contraption that was conveying warmth upon G'Kar's body _would_ have felt good had he not been so uneasy about the fate of his friend. "Anyway, I cannot allow Mollari to wake up, not see me, and think that he survived our ordeal while I did not! His ego is far too large as it is – we cannot afford to allow it to become any _more_ padded, now can we?"

"No, we can't." Doctor Franklin chuckled as he came into the room. "And he's already awake. But don't worry – I told him you're okay."

"No!" howled G'Kar. "Now I won't get to see the disappointed look on his face when he sees me alive!"

"Sorry if I ruined that for you," said Franklin drily. "Do you want to see him anyway? Your body temperature is approaching normal – just stay wrapped up in that blanket for a while and you should be good to go."

"See? I told you." G'Kar grinned pedantically at the nurse, who forced a shell of a smile and then promptly left the room. G'Kar shrugged, and then followed Franklin into the next room.

Vir Cotto was sitting in a rather uncomfortable-looking chair at Londo's bedside. Mollari himself was swaddled in blankets up to his chin – from the doorway, pretty much all G'Kar could see was the tip of his hair crest. Another forced air machine sat at the bedside, and G'Kar could make out the cords of at least two heating pads plugged into the wall. The line running from a fluid pump disappeared underneath the blanket cocoon. Vir leapt to his feet respectfully when he heard G'Kar come in.

"G'Kar!" He regarded the Narn with a slightly nervous expression. Vir _always_ seemed at least slightly nervous around G'Kar.

Hugging his blanket around himself, G'Kar approached the bed so that he could better see Londo's face. The bedridden Centauri lifted his head when he saw him. He looked mostly annoyed, but G'Kar knew he was not imagining the touch of relief he saw there as well.

"You are all right, then?" Londo asked before G'Kar could inquire the same thing.

"So it would appear." G'Kar lifted the corners of his blanket to denote that he was still being monitored by the medical staff, but that all seemed as though it would end well.

"Good. That is good." Londo laid his head back down on the pillow. "Apparently I have also cheated death once again. Our strange pairing lives another day." He sighed as though he could not quite believe it. G'Kar knew that the heart attack Londo had suffered just a few months prior had forced him to face his own mortality, and he did not doubt that that experience was on his mind just now.

"I'm glad to hear it." G'Kar dipped his head respectfully. A part of him wanted to wrap the fragile-looking Centauri in his arms and squeeze him hard enough to make him pay for scaring him like that, but also hard enough to know how much G'Kar had worried. And how bad he felt for leading Londo into that damned freezer in the first place. But before he could decide whether or not to act on this impulse, he heard footsteps behind him and saw Londo's gaze move past his shoulder. G'Kar and Vir both turned to see what appeared to be a giant walking mound of thick blue blanket enter the room, with just the tip of a Minbari headbone poking up from above it.

"Commander Ivanova told me what happened," said the blanket, which sounded very much like Lennier.

"Does the entire station know we were almost turned into icicles?" moaned Londo.

"Very likely," affirmed G'Kar. Despite the fact that a quarter of a million people lived on Babylon 5, it was shockingly difficult to keep anything a secret there.

"Anyway, Londo, I thought Vir might want you to have this, since it's his anyway." The little Minbari deposited the blanket into Vir's arms. "Are the two of you all right?"

"We have been reliably informed by the good doctor that we will be, thank you," Londo replied as Vir spread the blanket over him. He curled into it a little bit, as though despite the multiple heating implements currently applied to him, he still craved its warmth. But although he was clearly still at least a touch uncomfortable, he still spoke like the same old Londo. However, G'Kar wondered if this was because he was actually feeling better, or if he was merely doing an admittedly commendable job of _pretending_ that he was. If G'Kar knew anything about Centauri (and he sometimes thought he knew a little too much), it was that for them, it was all about keeping up appearances. He observed his friend closely as Londo asked of Vir, "Why did Lennier have your blanket, anyway?

"It's for movie nights," Vir answered, glancing over at Lennier.

"I am afraid the preferred room temperature for Minbari and Centauri differs by approximately twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit," explained Lennier.

"He didn't want me to be uncomfortable, so he offered to store the blanket in his quarters so I don't have to carry it back and forth." Vir smiled warmly at his friend, which Lennier returned.

"I have room," he said simply.

"Anyway, you're more than welcome to the blanket for as long as you need, Londo," said Vir. "It's really, really warm." His tone overflowed with an earnest sincerity.

"Thank you, Vir. Do you see how helpful and devoted he is, G'Kar? Caring for me in my time of need. And where is that sword-toting minion of yours during this dire hour? Nowhere to be found." Londo flashed his pointed canines.

G'Kar rolled his one real eye. "Ta'lon is no doubt keeping the masses of my adoring public at bay. They are certainly holding vigil for me as we speak."

Vir Cotto put his hands on his hips, straightened his posture, and said with less confidence than he undoubtedly hoped to project, "well, I might only be one person, but I've been sitting with Londo ever since they brought the two of you to Medlab. I think that ought to count for something."

"He didn't say it _didn't_ , Vir," said Londo with a combination of bewilderment and affection. "I, for one, am happier to have a few good friends at my side than to be hailed as a religious icon and hounded by crowds of fanatics."

"THEY ARE NOT…they are a little bit fanatical." G'Kar heaved a sigh.

Londo chuckled, then turned back to Vir. "I do think the worst is over now, Vir. I appreciate your company, but unless you enjoy watching me sleep for hours on end, I am afraid you will be quite bored should you continue to remain here."

"I…" Vir looked torn, clearly wanting to continue to express his loyalty to Londo, but also obviously not looking forward to the boring future remaining in Medlab held now that Londo's condition was stable. Luckily, Lennier jumped in.

"Londo's right, Vir – it's probably best that we let him and G'Kar rest. How about we play cards? We could find Marcus and ask him to join us."

"Oh….okay." Vir seemed to perk up a bit at that suggestion. "If Londo's sure that's okay with him…" He glanced back at Londo for confirmation, uncertainty in his eyes.

"It is." G'Kar heard an edge of weariness to his friend's voice. "Go and have a good time. I will be all right here. Bored out of my skull, but all right."

"Okay. I'll be back to check on you soon, though." Vir gave a little wave and Lennier performed his patented Religious Caste Minbari bow, and the two of them exited the room. Vir glanced back once over his shoulder, as if to make sure Londo hadn't died in the few seconds he had not been watching him, before finally vanishing from view.

G'Kar watched him leave. "What is it that we do, Mollari, to inspire such loyalty?"

"I am not sure, myself," Londo mused. When G'Kar turned to face him, he was toying pensively with the edge of the thick blue blanket. He seemed to be purposefully avoiding G'Kar's gaze, so G'Kar looked at him unblinkingly until Londo was uncomfortable enough to feel the need to meet his eye. "What?"

"Oh, it's nothing. It is only…we have come quite far on the front of loyalty, have we not?"

Londo snorted. "I do not know about _Narn_ , but Centauri are the most loyal of all beings. We are loyal to family, to country…"

"That is not what I meant." _I meant loyalty to each other. And I think you know that._

What could almost be called affection flickered in Londo's eyes, and G'Kar knew that his intuition had been correct. His friend knew precisely of what he spoke.

"I feel as though I am obligated to offer my apologies. It is my fault we got into this…mess." G'Kar laid his hand on Londo's blanketed arm with just a hint of tentativeness. Londo glanced down at the arm in feigned puzzlement, but G'Kar simultaneously felt him relax comfortably into the friendly gesture.

"And I am sorry, I suppose," Londo said, "for almost leaving you without the only person who provides spice in your otherwise dull existence. But yes, you are very right. It _was_ your fault. And it is your fault my spirits are gone, confiscated by one Mister Allan." Londo's blue eyes glinted then. "But we will have a story to tell, will we not?"

G'Kar's laugh echoed off of the walls of the tiny Medlab room. "Yes, we will, Mollari. That we will."


End file.
